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Basic Aztec facts: AZTEC ART

10th Apr 2025

Reconstruction of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan by Ignacio Marquina

The art of the Aztecs (or Mexica people as they called themselves) ranged from massive, splendidly decorated buildings to painted pottery to sculpture to featherwork... (Compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

The main thing to bear in mind with all Aztec art is that NOTHING was purely ‘decoration’. EVERYTHING was created to communicate ideas about their universe, their world, and their place in it... So they designed their architecture to mirror the layout of the landscape around them...

... their monuments, like their books, all contained symbols, to be read or acted out; these might help recount myths and great historical feats, honour gods and rulers, remind citizens of their legendary origins...

... their feather work - like a headdress or on a shield - was designed to show the (high) position in society of the person who wore or carried it... The feathers themselves, like other materials their art was made of, were precious, even sacred...

... So precious stones like jade or turquoise meant as much to the Aztecs as the piece of art they turned them into. For instance, only a VERY high priest would have worn a fabulous turquoise mosaic mask, like this one in the British Museum.

For the Mexica, wealth wasn’t measured in terms of what we call ‘money’; it lay in impressive objects that may have taken days, weeks or even months to create - like this beautiful carved wood atlatl (spear thrower) in the British Museum, decorated with shell, cotton and paper-thin hammered gold foil, in the shape of a warrior holding a spear.

In their stone sculptures Aztec artists not only accurately recorded real-life details of their wildlife - like the fangs and forked tongue of a rattlesnake - they held them as sacred creatures: the rattlesnake, for instance, was linked to the rainy season, to gods, to Venus, to the Pleiades... Objects had LOTS of associations!